The Church celebrates every year the solemn feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8. In the modern liturgical calendar, when the solemnity falls on a Sunday of Advent (as it did this year), it is transferred to the following day — Monday, December 9. The solemn feast of the Immaculate Conception is one of the luminous feast day that brighten up the Advent season. Unfortunately, its Octave (celebrated from December 8-15) was eliminated from the liturgy in 1955 by Pope Pius XII. But before that year, the Immaculate Conception shed its glorious light during the Advent season for a whole eight days, thus illuminating a very significant portion of Adventide.
The reason given for the modern practice (since 1969) of bumping the Immaculate Conception to the following day when December 8 falls on a Sunday of Advent is that a Marian feast day should not take precedence over the Advent Sunday liturgy. The same applies for any feast of a Saint. This is allegedly in order to give precedence to Christ, which in itself seems to be a perfectly acceptable reason.
There is, however, a problem with this mentality and the theology that underlies it. And the problem is fundamentally this: it assumes an opposition between devotion to Our Lord and devotion to the Blessed Virgin — an opposition that does not in any way exist.
The Saints point us towards Christ, not away from Him. Similarly (and to a much higher degree), the Blessed Virgin Mary points us towards Him — always! Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort established firmly this theological principle and demonstrated its profound truth. To oppose devotion to Jesus and devotion to Mary is to "separate what God has united" (Mk. 10: 9), which is forbidden by Our Lord Himself.
In the ecumenical days of the Second Vatican Council and following, a primary preoccupation of the leaders in the Catholic Church was to remove anything from the Catholic Faith that would pose an obstacle to unity with our separated Protestant brethren. Stating this is not a theoretical affirmation based on groundless speculation; it was clearly said to be the case by the architects of the new rite of Mass itself. The reason for doing this, whereas it may have been understandable in those days, has been shown in these last few decades to have been naïve and misguided. The truth is that introducing Protestant elements into Catholic worship, Catholic theology, and Catholic liturgy did not in any way make the Catholic Faith more appealing to Protestants. On the contrary: it affirmed them in their belief that the Protestant "Reformation" was right all along. Not to mention the devastating effects that it has had on the faith of the Catholic clergy and laity.
The authentic Catholic teaching on the relationship between Christ and His Saints is that, when we honour the Virgin Mary (and the Saints in general), we are, in fact, honouring Our Lord Jesus Christ. There are two ways of giving honour to Christ: either directly or indirectly. The latter involves honouring and venerating His Saints and all His works that produce or express holiness. When we venerate the Martyrs, we honour Christ's fidelity unto death; when we venerate the Doctors of the Church, we are honouring Christ's Wisdom; when we venerate the Virgins, it is Christ's purity of doctrine and teachings (and of course His physical purity as well) to which we are giving honour. The Saints do not lead us away from Christ: they point us to Him.
Using this principle and returning to the Immaculate Conception, it is interesting to see that those who refuse to honour, or even acknowledge, Our Lady's spotless conception often take this position under the guise of greater piety towards Christ. "We do not venerate Mary because we do not want to take honour away from Jesus," is their battle cry. And yet, such a statement is based on a false opposition between Jesus and Mary. Even at a natural level, it is clear to see that honouring a person's mother does not take honour away from that person. In fact, the exact opposite is true: we do dishonour to a person when we fail to acknowledge his very own mother. And this was true in biblical times as well. We see clearly, in the Old Testament, that if you wanted to honour a king (whether it be your own king or that of a neighbouring kingdom), you would show such honour by respecting, and expressing admiration towards, the king's mother. This, among other things, is the reason for the famous Montfortian maxim, To Jesus through Mary.
This beautiful and profound principle of approaching Our Lord through Our Lady has been expressed in much Catholic art and theology, especially over the last few centuries. The image shown here is from an old French holy card for First Communion. The inscription in French, at the bottom of the card, reads:
To Jesus through Mary: Mary gave us Jesus; let us go to Jesus through Mary. Oh, sweet Holy Communion!
One of the titles given to Our Lady is Destroyer of All Heresies. This formidable title may seem like hyperbole to some, but to others it is a very terrifying sentiment. Those in heresy, generally speaking, refuse to acknowledge and honour the various privileges given by Our Lord to His Blessed Mother: including the singular privilege of her being conceived without sin (her Immaculate Conception). Protestants will often quote the passage of Scripture from St. Paul:
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. -Rom. 3:23
And while the Greek New Testament does have "fallen short" as the second verb in this phrase, the Latin Vulgate gives us another reading, one that the Catholic Church has adopted as her official reading of the passage. The Douay-Rheims, which is a literal English translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible, translates the passage in this way:
For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God.
In Latin, the verb used is egent, which means to be in need of, desire, or want.
Thus, while it is absolutely orthodox to say that "all have sinned," these words must not be understood in the sense that the Virgin Mary was included or has somehow not lived up to God's expectations of her. Ask a Bible-believing Protestant, "The Scripture says ALL HAVE SINNED. Do you understand Jesus to be included in that statement?" They will, of course, all say, "No. Of course not. All have sinned...apart from Jesus." "And how to you know that?" you can ask as a follow-up. The person will probably reply something to the effect that our Christian Faith teaches that Christ was without sin, as the Creed says, "like us in all things but sin." And our Catholic response would simply be. "Exactly. You believe and interpret the Scripture in the sense in which the Church has always understood it. And that's why we have to exclude the Blessed Virgin Mary from that statement as well, for the Church has always taught that Mary was without sin (both Original and Actual sin)."
So the Virgin Mary has not sinned, and yet she too "needs" the glory of God. She was, in fact, preserved from all sin by virtue of His Glory, by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Those who reject Marian dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception also end up rejecting the Church that Jesus Christ founded (the Catholic Church) and rejecting His Sacraments as well. This is especially true of the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist. It is without a doubt that the rejection of Our Lady in her various titles and privileges eventually leads to the rejection of the true Church and of the Blessed Sacrament. This is perfectly in harmony with the title given to Our Lady, Destroyer of All Heresies. To reject her leads to falling into heresy, and eventually into the heresy of rejecting the Catholic Church and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
Going even more deeply, I believe that it is clear from Church history that rejection of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception is, in a very deep sense, a rejection of the mystery of the Incarnation in all its fullness. Anyone who has a true sense of the dignity of God can see how completely inappropriate it would have been if Jesus Christ, the God-man who was completely without sin, were conceived in the womb of a sinful woman. And yet we do not believe that Mary was without sin because it would have been inappropriate or unworthy of the Mother of God; we believe she was without sin because it is, and has always been, the constant teaching of the Christian Church. And the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, never lies when He speaks through His Church.
The Sacraments are a natural extension of the mystery of the Incarnation. Jesus is only fully and truly present in His Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament because He was made incarnate in the first place. There is no Holy Eucharist or Real Presence without the Incarnation. I believe that this is why rejecting Our Lady's Immaculate Conception ultimately leads to the rejection of the Incarnation and, as a consequence, of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.
Truly, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Destroyer of All Heresies!
O Mary, conceived without sin,
pray for us who have recourse to thee!